CHAPTER VII

RECORDING THE ASTONISHING VALOUR DISPLAYED BY A CERTAIN SMALL
MOUSE IN A CORNER

AS Honoria St. Quentin and the reluctant Shotover stepped, side by
side, from the warmth and dimness obtaining in the anteroom, into the
pleasant coolness of the moonlit balcony, Lady Constance Quayle, altogether
forgetful of her usual careful civility and pretty correctness of demeanour,
uttered an inarticulate cry—a cry, indeed, hardly human in its abandon
and
page: 339 unreasoning anguish, resembling
rather the shriek of the doubling hare as the pursuing greyhound nips it
across the loins. Regardless of all her dainty finery of tulle, and roses,
and flashing diamonds, she flung herself forward, face downwards, across the
coping of the balustrade, her bare arms outstretched, her hands clasped
above her head. Mr. Decies, blue‐eyed, black‐haired, smooth of skin, looking
noticeably long and lithe in his close‐fitting, dress clothes, made a rapid
movement as though to lay hold on her and bear her bodily away. Then,
recognising the futility of any such attempt, he turned upon the intruders,
his high‐spirited, Celtic face drawn with emotion, his attitude rather
dangerously warlike.

“What do you want?” he demanded hotly.

“My dear good fellow,” Lord Shotover began, with the most assuaging air of
apology, “I assure you the very last thing I‐we—I mean I—want is to be a
nuisance. Only Miss St. Quentin thought—in fact, Decies, don’t you see—dash
it all, you know, there seemed to be some sort of worry going on out here
and so”—

But Honoria did not wait for the conclusion of elaborate explanations, for
that cry and the unrestraint of the girl’s attitude not only roused, but
shocked her. It was not fitting that any man, however kindly or even
devoted, should behold this well‐bred, modest and gentle, young maiden in
her present extremity. So she swept past Mr. Decies and bent over Lady
Constance Quayle, raised her, strove to soothe her agitation, speaking in
tones of somewhat indignant tenderness.

But, though deriving a measure of comfort from the steady arm about her
waist, from the strong, protective presence, from the rather stern beauty of
the face looking down into hers, Lady Constance could not master her
agitation. The train had left the metals, so to speak, and the result was
confusion dire. A great shame held her, a dislocation of mind. She suffered
that loneliness of soul which forms so integral a part of the misery of all
apparently irretrievable disaster, whether moral or physical, and places the
victim of it, in imagination at all events, rather terribly beyond the
pale.

“Oh!” she sobbed, “you ought not to be so kind to me. I am very wicked. I
never supposed I could be so wicked. What shall I do? I am so frightened at
myself and at everything. I did not recognise you. I didn’t see it was only
Shotover.”

“Well, but now you do see, my dear Con, it’s only me” that gentleman
remarked, with a cheerful disregard of grammar.
page: 340 “And so you mustn’t upset yourself any more. It’s
awfully bad for you, and uncomfortable for everybody else, don’t you know.
You must try to pull yourself together a bit and we’ll help you—of course,
I’ll help you. We’ll all help you, of course we will, and pull you through
somehow.”

But the girl only lamented herself the more piteously.

“Oh no, Shotover, you must not be so kind to me! You couldn’t, if you knew
how wicked I have been.”

The girl’s voice had sunk away into a sob. She shuddered, letting her pretty,
brown head fall back against Honoria St. Quentin’s bare shoulder,—while the
moonlight glinted on her jewels and the night wind swayed the hanging
clusters of the pink geraniums. Along with the warmth and scent of flowers,
streaming outward through the open windows, came a confused sound of many
voices, of discreet laughter, mingled with the wailing sweetness of violins.
Then the pleading, broken, childish voice took up its tale again:—

“I will be good. I know I have promised, and I have let him give me a number
of beautiful things. He has been very kind to me, because he is clever, and
of course I am stupid. But he has never been impatient with me. And I am not
ungrateful, indeed, Shotover, I am not. It was only for a minute I was
wicked enough to think of doing it. But Mr. Decies told me he—asked
me—and—and we were so happy at Whitney in the winter. And it seemed too hard
to give it all up, as he said it was true. But I will be good, indeed I
will. Really it was only for a minute I thought of it. I know I have
promised. Indeed, I will make no fuss. I will be good. I will marry Richard
Calmady.”

“But this is simply intolerable!” Honoria said in a low voice.

She held herself tall and straight, looking gallant yet pure, austere even,
as some pictured Jeanne d’Arc, a great singleness of purpose, a high courage
of protest, an effect at once of fearless challenge and of command in her
bearing.—“Is it not a scandal,” she went on, “that in a civilised country,
at this time of day, a woman should be allowed, actually forced, to suffer
so much?
page: 341 You must not permit this
martyrdom to be completed—you can’t!”

As she spoke Decies watched her keenly. Who this stately, young lady—so
remarkably unlike the majority of Lord Shotover’s intimate, feminine
acquaintance—might be, he did not know. But he discerned in her an ally and
a powerful one.

“Yes,” he said impulsively, “you are right. It is a martyrdom and a
scandalous one. It’s worse than murder, it’s sacrilege. It’s not like any
ordinary marriage. I don’t want to be brutal, but it isn’t. There’s
something repulsive in it, something unnatural.”

The young man looked at Honoria, and read in her expression a certain
agreement and encouragement.

“You know it, Shotover—you know it just as well as I do. And that justified
me in attempting what I suppose I would not otherwise have felt it
honourable to attempt.—Look here, Shotover, I will tell you what has just
happened. I would have had to tell you to‐morrow, in any case, if we had
carried the plan out. But I suppose I have no alternative but to tell you
now, since you’ve come.”

He ranged himself in line with Miss St. Quentin, his back against one of the
big, stone vases. He struggled honestly to keep both temper and emotion
under control, but a rather volcanic energy was perceptible in him.

“I love Lady Constance,” he said. “I have told her and—and she cares for me.
I am not a Crœsus like Calmady. But I am not a pauper. I have enough to keep
a wife in manner suitable to her position and my own. When my uncle, Ulick
Decies, dies—which I hope he’ll not hurry to do, since. I am very fond of
him—there’ll be the Somersetshire property addition to my own dear, old
place in County Cork. And your sister simply hates this marriage”—

But the young girl cowered down, hiding her face in Honoria St. Quentin’s
bosom.

“Oh! don’t say it again—don’t say it,” she implored. “It was wicked of me to
listen to you even for a minute. I ought to have stopped you at once and
sent you away. It was very wrong of me to listen, and talk to you, and tell
you all that I did. But everything is so strange, and I have been so
miserable. I never supposed anybody could ever be so miserable. And I knew
it was ungrateful of me, and so, I dared not tell anybody.
page: 342 I would have told papa, but Louisa never let me
be alone with him. She said papa indulged me, and made me selfish and
fanciful, and so I have never seen him for more than a little while. And I
have been so frightened.”—She raised her head, gazing wide‐eyed first at
Miss St. Quentin and then at her brother. “I have thought such dreadful
things. I must be very bad. I wanted to run away. I wanted to die”—

“There, you hear, you hear,” Decies cried hoarsely, spreading abroad his
hands, in sudden violence of appeal to Honoria. “For God’s sake help us! I
am not aware whether you are a relation, or a friend, or what. But I am
convinced you can help, if only you choose to do so. And I tell you she is
just killing herself over this accursed marriage. Someone’s got at her and
talked her into some wild notion of doing her duty, and marrying money for
the sake of her family”—

“And so she believes she’s committing the seven deadly sins, and I don’t know
what besides, because she rebels against this marriage and is unhappy. Tell
her it’s absurd, it’s horrible, that she should do what she loathes and
detests. Tell her this talk about duty is a blind, and a fiction. Tell her
she isn’t wicked. Why, God in heaven, if we were none of us more wicked than
she is, this poor old world would be so clean a place that the holy angels
might walk barefoot along the Piccadilly pavement there, outside, without
risking to soil so much as the hem of their garments! Make her understand
that the only sin for her is to do violence to her nature by marrying a man
she’s afraid of, and for whom she does not care. I don’t want to play a low
game on Sir Richard Calmady and steal that which belongs to him. But she
doesn’t belong to him—she is mine, just my own. I knew that from the first
day I came to Whitney, and looked her in the face, Shotover. And she knows
it too, only she’s been terrorised with all this devil’s talk of duty.”

So far the words had poured forth volubly, as in a torrent. Now the speaker’s
voice dropped, and they came slowly, defiantly, yet without hesitation.

“And so I asked her to go away with me, now, to‐night, and marry me
to‐morrow. I can make her happy—oh, no fear about that! And she would have
consented and gone. We’d have been away by now—if you and this lady had not
come just when you did, Shotover.”

The gentleman addressed whistled very softly.

“Would you, though?” he said, adding meditatively:—

page: 343

“By George now, who’d have thought of Connie going the pace like that!”

“Oh, Shotover, never tell, promise me you will never tell them!” the poor
child cried again. “I know it was wicked, but”—

“No, no, you are mistaken there,” Honoria put in, holding her still closer.
“You were tempted to take a rather desperate way out of your difficulties.
It would have been unwise, but there was nothing wicked in it. The wrong
thing is—as Mr. Decies tells you—to marry without love, and so make all your
life a lie, by pretending to give Richard Calmady that which you do not, and
cannot, give him.”

Then the young soldier broke in resolutely again.

“I tell you I asked her to go away, and I ask her again now”‐

“The deuce you do!” Lord Shotover exclaimed, his sense of amusement getting
the better alike of astonishment and of personal regrets.

“Only now I ask you to sanction her going, Shotover. And I ask you”—he turned
to Miss St. Quentin—“to come with her. I am not even sure of your name, but
I know, by all that you’ve said and done in the last half‐hour, I can be
very sure of you. And, I perceive, that if you come nobody will dare to say
anything unpleasant—there’ll be nothing, indeed, to be said.”

Honoria smiled. The magnificent egoism of mankind in love struck her as
distinctly diverting. Yet she had a very kindly feeling towards this
black‐haired, bright‐eyed, energetic, young lover. He was in deadly
earnest—to the removing even of mountains. And he had need to be so, for
that mountains immediately blocked the road to his desires was evident even
to her enthusiastic mind. She looked across compellingly at Lord Shotover.
Let him speak first. She needed time, at this juncture, in which to arrange
her ideas and to think.

“My dear good fellow,” that gentleman began obediently, patting Decies on the
shoulder, “I’m all on your side. I give you my word I am, and I’ve reason to
believe my father will be so too. But you see, an elopement—specially in
’our sort of highly respectable, hum‐drum family—is rather a strong order.
Upon my honour it is, you know, Decies. And, even though kindly countenanced
by Miss St. Quentin, and sanctioned by me, it would make a precious
undesirable lot of talk. It really is a rather irregular fashion of
conducting the business you see. And then—advice I always give others and
only wish I could
page: 344 always remember to take
myself—it’s very much best to be off with the old love before you’re on with
the new.”

“Yes, yes,” Miss St. Quentin put in with quick decision. “Lord Shotover has
laid his finger on the heart of the matter. It is just that.—Lady
Constance’s engagement to Richard Calmady must be cancelled before her
engagement to you, Mr. Decies, is announced. For her to go away with you
would be to invite criticism, and put herself hopelessly in the wrong. She
must not put herself in the wrong. Let me think! There must be some way by
which we can avoid that.”

An exultation, hitherto unexperienced by her, inspired Honoria St. Quentin.
Her attitude was slightly unconventional. She sat on the stone balustrade,
with long‐limbed, lazy grace, holding the girl’s hand, forgetful of herself,
forgetful, in a degree, of appearances, concerned only with the problem of
rescue presented to her. The young man’s honest, wholehearted devotion, the
young girl’s struggle after duty and her piteous despair, nay, the close
contact of that soft, maidenly body that she had so lately held against her
in closer, more intimate, embrace than she had ever held anything human
before, aroused a new class of sentiment, a new order of emotion, within
her. She realised, for the first time, the magnetism, the penetrating and
poetic splendour of human love. To witness the spectacle of it, to be thus
in touch with it, excited her almost as sailing a boat in a heavy sea, or
riding to hounds in a stiff country, excited her. And it followed that now,
while she perched aloft boylike, on the balustrade, her delicate beauty took
on a strange effulgence, a something spiritual, mysterious, elusive, and yet
dazzling as the moonlight which bathed her charming figure. Seeing which, it
must be owned that Lord Shotover’s attitude towards her ceased to be
strictly fraternal, while the attractions of ladies more fair and kind than
wise paled very sensibly.

“I wish I hadn’t been such a fool in my day, and run amuck with my chances,”
he thought.

But Miss St. Quentin was altogether innocent of his observation or any such
thinkings. She looked up suddenly, her face irradiated by an exquisite
smile.

“Yes, I have it,” she cried. “I see the way clear.”

“But I can’t tell them,” broke in Lady Constance.

Honoria’s hand closed down on hers reassuringly.

“No,” she said, “you shall not tell them. And Lord Shotover shall not tell
them. Sir Richard Calmady shall tell Lord
page: 345
Fallowfeild that he wishes to be released from his engagement, as he
believes both you and he will be happier apart. Only you must be brave, both
for your own sake, and for Mr. Decies’, and for Richard Calmady’s sake
also.—Lady Constance,” she went on, with a certain gentle authority, “do you
want to go back to Whitney to‐morrow, or next day, all this nightmare of an
unhappy marriage done away with and gone? Well, then, you must come and see
Sir Richard Calmady to‐night, and, like an honourable woman, tell him the
whole truth. It must be done at once, or your courage may fail. We will come
with you‐Lord Shotover and I”—

“Good Lord, will we though!” the young man ejaculated, while the girl’s
great, heifer’s eyes grew strained with wonder at this astounding
announcement.

“I know it will be rather terrible,” Honoria continued calmly. “But it is a
matter of a quarter of an hour, as against a lifetime, and of honour as
against a lie. So it’s worth while, don’t you think so, when your whole
future, and Mr. Decies’”—she pressed the soft hand again steadily—“is at
stake? You must be brave now, and tell him the truth—just simply that you do
not love him enough—that you have tried,—you have, I know you have done
that,—but that you have failed, that you love someone else, and that
therefore you beg him, in mercy, before it is too late, to set you
free.”

Fascinated both by her appearance and by the simplicity of her trenchant
solution of the difficulty, Lord Shotover stared at the speaker. Her faith
was infectious. Yet it occurred to him that all women, good and bad, are at
least alike in this—that their methods become radically unscrupulous when
they find themselves in a tight place.

“It is a fine plan. It ought to work, for—cripple or not—poor Calmady’s a
gentleman,” he said, slowly. “But doesn’t it seem just a trifle rough, Miss
St. Quentin, to ask him to be his own executioner?”

Honoria had slipped down from the balustrade, and stood erect in the
moonlight.

“I think not,” she replied. “The woman pays, as a rule. Lady Constance has
paid already quite heavily enough, don’t you think so? Now we will have the
exception that proves the rule. The man shall pay whatever remains of the
debt. But we must not waste time. It is not late yet, we shall still find
him up, and my brougham is here. I told Lady Aldham I should be home fairly
early. Get a cloak, Lady Constance, and meet us in the hall. I suppose you
can go down by some back
page: 346 way so as to
avoid meeting people. Lord Shotover, will you take me to say good‐night to
your sister, Lady Louisa?”

The young man fairly chuckled.

“And you, Mr. Decies, must stay and dance.”—She smiled upon him very sweetly.
“I promise you it will come through all right, for, as Lord Shotover says,
whatever his misfortunes may be, Richard Calmady is a gentleman.—Ah! I hope
you are going to be very happy. Good‐bye.”

Decies’ black head went down over her hand, and he kissed it impulsively.

“Good‐bye,” he said, the words catching a little in his throat. “When the
time comes, may you find the man to love you as you deserve—though I doubt
if there’s such a man living, or dead either, for that matter! God bless
you.”

Some half‐hour later Honoria stood among the holland‐shrouded furniture in
Lady Calmady’s sitting‐room in Lowndes Square. The period of exalted
feeling, of the conviction of successful attainment, was over, and her heart
beat somewhat painfully. For she had had time, by now, to realise the
surprising audacity of her own proceedings. Lord Shotover’s parley with
Richard Calmady’s man‐servant, on the doorstep, had brought that home to
her, placing what had seemed obvious, as a course of action to her fervid
imagination, in quite a new light. Sir Richard Calmady was at home? He was
still up?—To that, yes. Would he see Lady Constance Quayle upon urgent
business?—To that again, yes—after a rather lengthy delay, while the valet,
inscrutable, yet evidently highly critical, made inquiries.—The trees in the
square had whispered together uncomfortably, while the two young ladies
waited in the carriage. And Lord Shotover’s shadow, which had usually, very
surely, nothing in the least portentous about it, lay queerly, three ways at
once, in varying degrees of density, across the grey pavement in the
conflicting gas and moon‐light.

And now, as she stood among the shrouded furniture, which appeared oddly
improbable in shape seen in the flickering of two hastily‐lighted candles,
Honoria could hear Shotover walking back and forth, patiently, on that same
grey pavement outside. She was overstrained by the emotions and events of
the past hours. Small matters compelled her attention. The creaking of a
board, the rustle of a curtain, the silence even of this large, but
half‐inhabited, house, were to her big with suggestion, disquietingly
replete with possible meaning, of exaggerated importance to her anxiously
listening ears.

Lord Shotover had stopped walking. He was talking to the
page: 347 coachman. Honoria entertained a conviction that,
in the overflowing of his good‐nature, he talked—sooner or later—to every
soul whom he met. She derived almost childish comfort from the knowledge of
the near neighbourhood of that eminently good‐natured presence. Lord
Shotover’s very obvious faults faded from her remembrance. She estimated him
only by his size, his physical strength, his large indulgence of all
weaknesses—including his own. He constituted a link between her and things
ordinary and average, for which she was rather absurdly thankful at this
juncture. For the minutes passed slowly, very slowly. It must be getting on
for half an hour since little Lady Constance, trembling and visibly
affrighted, had passed out of sight, and the door of the smoking‐room had
closed behind her. The nameless agitation which possessed her earlier that
same evening returned upon Honoria St. Quentin. But its character had
suffered change. The questioning of the actual, the suspicion of universal
illusion, had departed; and in its place she suffered alarm of the concrete,
of the incalculable force of human passion, and of a manifestation of
tragedy in some active and violent form. She did not define her own fears,
but they surrounded her nevertheless, so that the slightest sound made her
start.

For, indeed, how slowly the minutes did pass! Lord Shotover was walking
again. The horse rattled its bit, and pawed the ground impatient of delay.
Though lofty, the room appeared close and hot, with drawn blinds and shut
windows. Honoria began to move about restlessly, threading her way between
the pieces of shrouded furniture. A chalk drawing of Lady Calmady stood on
an easel in the far corner. The portrait emphasised the sweetness and
abiding pathos, rather than the strength, of the original; and Honoria,
standing before it, put her hands over her eyes. For the pictured face
seemed to plead with and reproach her. Then a swift fear took her of
disloyalty, of hastiness, of self‐confidence trenching on cruelty. She had
announced, rather arrogantly, that whatever balance remained to be paid, in
respect of Sir Richard and Lady Constance Quayle’s proposed marriage, should
be paid by the man. But would the man, in point of fact, pay it? Would it
not, must it not, be paid, eventually, by this other noble and much enduring
woman—whom she had called her friend, and towards whom she played the part,
as she feared, of betrayer? In her hot espousal of Lady Constance’s cause
she had only saved one woman at the expense of another—Oh! how hot the room
grew! Suffocating—Lord Shotover’s steps died away in the distance. She could
look
page: 348 Lady Calmady in the face no more.
Secure in her own self‐conceit and vanity, she had betrayed her friend.

Suddenly the sharp peal of a bell, the opening of a door, the dragging of
silken skirts, and the hurrying of footsteps.—Honoria gathered up her
somewhat scattered courage and swung out into the hall. Lady Constance
Quayle came towards her, groping, staggering, breathless, her face convulsed
with weeping. But to this, for the moment, Miss St. Quentin paid small heed.
For, at the far end of the hall, a bright light streamed out from the open
doorway. And in the full glare of it stood a young man—his head, with its
cap of close‐cropped curls, proudly distinguished as that of some classic
hero, his features the beautiful features of Katherine Calmady, his height
but two‐thirds the height a man of his make should be, his face drawn and
livid as that of a corpse, his arms hanging down straight at his sides, his
hands only just not touching the marble quarries of the floor on either side
of him.

Honoria uttered an exclamation of uncontrollable pity and horror, caught
Constance Quayle by the arm, and hurried out into the moonlit square to the
waiting carriage. Lord Shotover flung away the end of his cigar and strolled
towards them.

“Got through, fixed it all right—eh, Connie? Bravo—that’s grand!—Oh, you
needn’t tell me! I can imagine it’s been a beastly piece of work, but anyway
it’s over now. You must go home and go to bed, and I’ll account for you
somehow to Louisa. My mind’s becoming quite inventive to‐night, I promise
you.—There, get in—try to pull yourself together. Miss St. Quentin, upon my
word I don’t know how to thank you. You’ve been magnificent, and put us
under an everlasting obligation, Con and Decies, and my father and me.—Nice
night isn’t it? You’ll put us down in Albert Gate? All right. A thousand
thanks.—Yes, I’ll go on the box again. You haven’t much room for my legs
among all those flounces. Bless me, it occurs to me I’m getting confoundedly
hungry. I shall be awfully glad of some supper.”